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The Librarian’s First Dataset: A Treatise on Incredible Nerdiness

I must preface this post by saying that, if you didn’t know already, I’m a huge herd. The biggest. There’s nothing I’m more passionate about than knowledge and learning, and this has often earned me very perplexed looks from people who probably think I’m crazy. In this post, I’m going to wax poetic about knowledge and reveal the depths of my geekiness. However, I’m guessing if you’re here reading this blog, this is probably not going to come as any sort of a surprise to you.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on planning a research data management class. Working with researchers on their data is hands-down my favorite part of my job. I adore science and the best part of being a medical librarian/research informationist is that I get to work with all different researchers and hear about all sorts of fascinating things. Sometimes I regret that I didn’t get a science degree, but mostly I’m okay with it because this job allows me to get my hands into all sorts of different things and never have to choose a specialty. Talking to researchers is fascinating. However, the more I talk to them, the more I realize that a lot of them really have no idea what they’re doing when it comes to data management. These are brilliant people, to be sure, but the way they handle their data makes me cringe. They’ve never been trained to do it properly, but as a librarian, I have that training. Part of what I do is helping people with their data, but I also believe in the adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him to fish. I’m one librarian in a huge research enterprise. As much as I’d like to, there’s no way I could possibly reach everyone to personally help them figure out their data. So one of the things I decided to do to help mitigate the fact that I can’t be in eight million places at once is to offer a class on research data management.

Because I work in the field of medicine, in which everything must be evidence-based, of course I wasn’t satisfied just to offer a class and hope people liked it. I am a data librarian, so I decided that I should probably gather some data! My plan was to devise a pre-test that people would take before the class, then a follow-up post test. Obviously the goal was that they wouldn’t know the answers to the questions on the pre-test, and then they would after the class. I spent weeks agonizing over how best to assess this. I’ve had very, very preliminary training in devising assessment instruments, but mostly I was just kind of taking a shot in the dark when I came up with my pre-test. I changed the questions a million times, but I finally came up with something that I thought would probably work.

Today, our office manager sent out the reminder email about tomorrow’s class to those who had RSVP’d. The email contained a link to the survey and a brief explanation of why I was asking people to complete it. It was a short survey, took only a couple minutes to complete, but I had this sinking feeling that everyone would ignore it. Because of IRB (Institutional Research Board) requirements, I had emphasized in the email that people weren’t required to take the survey if they wanted to do the class. I figured people would see that and just ignore the survey, but I was keeping my fingers crossed. I was on the train to the airport in San Francisco on my way back to Los Angeles when I saw that the email had gone out.

So now, allow me to set the scene for one of the nerdiest moments of my life. I had gotten to the airport and had some time to kill before my flight, so I was sitting in a wine bar getting something to eat (and drink of course). I ordered a glass of Champagne (yeah, that’s how I roll) and pulled out my laptop. I was logging on when the Champagne arrived. I pulled up the survey site. The email had only gone out maybe an hour or so earlier, so I wasn’t expecting any responses yet. But when I logged on, you know what I found? Almost EVERY SINGLE PERSON who has registered for the class had taken the survey! When I saw the number of responses, I made an audible, astonished gasp, and several people in the restaurant turned and looked at me. I refrained from getting up from my seat and jumping up and down in excitement, though this is what I would have done if I had been alone. 🙂

Not only did people respond to my survey, but they responded exactly as I hoped they would. I won’t go into detail here, since obviously I’m going to attempt to publish all of this in a peer-reviewed journal. 🙂 But essentially, these pre-test results reveal that, as I had suspected, these people really need a lot of help with this stuff and don’t have a lot of knowledge of the many awesome resources out there. Hopefully that will all change tomorrow when I teach this class.

So that is the story of how I came to have my very own research dataset. This is incredibly heartening for me. For one thing, I’ve always felt like I really ought to have more hands-on experience working with data if I’m going to teach it. My dataset is super tiny compared to the datasets I help researchers with, but this is a good start. More importantly, I am so excited that this actually worked. I’ve been wanting to move forward with additional research in this area, but I wasn’t entirely sure if it was worthwhile, since I basically only had anecdotal evidence to suggest this kind of thing was needed, and there have been a few naysayers whose words weighed heavily on my mind. I’ve worked really hard on all of this, and it’s been exhausting, especially with having to work around sort of a crazy travel schedule. But now it feels like things are all falling into place. All those little ideas I’ve had floating around in my mind about additional research I’d like to do feel a little more feasible now. So it’s an exciting time for me career-wise. Now that I’m a little more assured that I know what I’m doing, I have some good ideas about how to move forward. I’ve got a hunger for data and research now and I need more. 🙂

So yeah, again, probably news to no one, but I’m a huge nerd. Now, in celebration, I’m going to order a second glass of Champagne to enjoy in the hour before I have to catch my flight. Cheers!